A huge wave of anti-Semitic literature continues to sweep the Arab and
Islamic world.

The current profusion of anti-Semitic literature in the Arab world is
far from a new-born phenomenon, having deep roots that go back to the
rise of Nazism in Germany and the period following the Arab defeat in
the 1948 war against Israel.

Since the Iranian Revolution and the spread of extremist Islam in the
region, anti-Semitic books with Islamic roots have boomed. Alongside continued
“imports” of anti-Semitic European
“classics”, a “local produce” of anti-Semitic
literature spiced with Islamic content is flourishing, and is being exported
to Muslim communities in the Western world, including in the UK and the
United States, and Islamic countries outside the immediate boundaries
of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

In this literature, the boundaries and distinctions between Israel, Zionism
and Judaism have deliberately become totally blurred. Israel was and still
is, from the anti-Semitic Arab and Muslim viewpoint, the “front
line” of the Jewish people and Zionist movement worldwide, which
support it and empower it to confront the Arab and Islamic world. (1)

What are the objectives of the Arab/Muslim regimes and the academic researchers,
clerics and politicians, who support this “hate industry”
of anti-Semitic literature? Why is it that so much energy is spent on
pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious research, based on forgery, prejudices
and endlessly recycled and unfounded nonsense? As in the past, the contemporary
“hate industry” constitutes an effective means of mobilizing
popular support in the hands of dictatorships striving to channel the
feelings of embitterment and frustration of their impoverished and suffering
populations. It also serves as a valuable tool, among a host of others,
used in the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian struggle; and it reflects
the basic unwillingness to accept the existence of the State of Israel
and the challenge posed by the Zionist Jewish state in the very midst
of the Arab and Muslim world.

One should by no means underestimate the significance of this widespread
“hate industry” and the damage caused by it in the short and
the long term. This literature does not remain confined to mosques and
university campuses. It reaches far beyond the circles of dubious intellectuals
and extremist clerics. It enjoys widespread circulation and popularity
throughout the Arab and Muslim world as well as the Muslim communities
in Europe and the Western world.

It is therefore not surprising that during the last decade, books such
as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared in updated editions in
Arab and Muslim countries, as part of a new “rage” of anti-Semitic
and anti-Jewish publications. New editions have been released in Egypt
(1994), in Iran (1994), and in Lebanon (2000), and “exported”
to the Palestinian authority and the Israeli Arab communities, as well
as to Arab and Muslim countries, where they served and still serve elements
who oppose peace and normalization.

This “hate industry” may serve to justify or even encourage
Palestinians or other Muslims to engage in murderous terrorist attacks
against Israelis and Jews. The anti-Semitic literature points to the “Jewish
danger” as the main threat to Islam, to which holy war (jihad) is
the only response. It sometimes goes as far as explicitly advocating violence
and murderous attacks against Jews. Potential terrorists are nurtured
by anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish propaganda originating from Islamic extremism,
which portrays the Jews as descendants of apes and pigs, worshippers of
the calf and of Satan, and cursed, unclean and impious people, whose ambition
is to desecrate mosques. In some cases Islamic anti-Semitism has been
seen to join forces with “mainstream anti-Semitism”: some
suicide bombers were found to have kept copies of the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, and were obviously convinced they were conducting a struggle
against a Jewish world-embracing conspiracy that poses a direct threat
to the Muslim nations. (2)